The following message was sent by President Cauce to all UW faculty, staff and academic personnel on Tuesday, April 29, 2025.
Over the past several weeks and months, there have been many questions about how the University of Washington is dealing with federal government actions that affect research funding and/or represent unwarranted and constitutionally questionable intrusions into our ability to educate students, care for patients and conduct research. At the same time, there have been a range of opinions expressed about how we and other universities should be responding to these threats.
We are actively responding on several fronts, many of which Provost Serio and I discussed in our April 3 message to the UW community and/or are outlined on the Federal Policy Updates page. Today, I’d like to focus on how the UW is acting in concert with its partners to respond to the ongoing effort to upend the decades-old partnership between universities and the federal government — a partnership that has made the United States healthier, safer and more prosperous.
The UW is engaged in a range of collective conversations and efforts, including through the Big Ten Academic Alliance (BTAA), Association of American Universities (AAU), Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities (APLU) and American Council on Education (ACE). These groups regularly bring together university presidents, provosts, vice provosts for research, chief financial officers, communications and federal relations leads, diversity officers, vice presidents for student life, deans of medicine and CEOs of university hospitals, and attorneys general and chief counsels, among others, to share information and discuss strategies for engagement and/or responses to federal actions. We have also been meeting at least weekly — and more often several times a week — with subgroups of these same key leaders to discuss how federal actions are affecting us, and how to best mitigate any negative effects. For example, we are involved in a nationwide effort to propose a simpler format for reimbursement of indirect costs of research.
Additionally, I, UW Bothell Chancellor Kristen Esterberg, UW Tacoma Chancellor Sheila Edwards Lange and nearly 500 of our colleagues from community and technical colleges, public and private liberal arts colleges, and research universities around the country signed a letter criticizing unwarranted federal intrusions and calling for more constructive engagement. As we said in the letter, we are open to constructive reform and support legitimate government oversight. But we must resist unwarranted government intrusion and the coercive use of public research funding.
In partnership with the Washington state Attorney General’s Office, we have also been working closely with colleagues in AAU, APLU and ACE to push back in the courts against federal actions that endanger our missions. We have also assisted in legal challenges against the threat to deport students and faculty for lawful speech and to action by the Department of Energy to arbitrarily cut funding rates.
We have also been instrumental in supporting affirmative litigation brought by Washington state, filing numerous declarations in support of lawsuits to protect the UW and others. When Washington state sued the federal government to keep the National Institutes of Health from capping indirect cost rates, the UW provided critical information enabling the court to enter an injunction to keep the change from being implemented. The UW has similarly supported lawsuits to halt attempts to freeze federal grants and funding that contain elements related to diversity, equity and inclusion; to halt delays in reviewing and renewing NIH grant funding; and to halt the dismantling of the Institute of Museum and Library Services, among others. Most recently, as part of the UW’s efforts to support international students affected by the federal government’s arbitrary revocation of some students’ immigration status, the UW supplied key declarations to support litigation that saw the federal government enjoined and forced to reverse its actions.
As these and other actions are challenged, we are using a range of mechanisms to support faculty, staff and students, including those who are funded by grants that have been delayed or canceled. As Provost Serio and I wrote earlier in April, that includes the University taking the risk of allowing departments to authorize advanced spending for 30 days on grants that are pending renewal or extension. But as we also noted, our ability to backstop federal funding is very limited. No source of money available to the UW — public or private — can possibly replace more than a small fraction of the more than $1.2 billion in federally funded research we conducted last fiscal year alone.
In addition, while we closely monitor communications from the U.S. President and federal agencies, we are not taking preemptive action that we believe would not benefit — or would even run counter to — our mission. For example, we are not preemptively eliminating our diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility programs. We do and will, of course, continue to follow all federal laws. Our programs to support the success of all students and employees operate in a manner consistent with current federal law, and we routinely audit programs to ensure this, as well as responding to complaints when they are made.
This is unquestionably a very difficult time with an unprecedented amount of uncertainty, lack of clarity in communications from the federal government, constantly changing grant and contract reporting requirements, and reporting on social media and in news reports that add to anxiety and confusion. For example, there have been reports in the press that we cannot accept NIH funding unless we eliminate our diversity, equity and inclusion programs. The UW’s programs are fully compliant with federal and state law, and we continue to accept NIH funding as such. The federal administration may wish to change the law, but it has not succeeded in doing so yet.
Finally, I want to thank members of our congressional delegation, led by Sen. Patty Murray and Sen. Maria Cantwell, for their steadfast support of the University and our students and scholars. We are fortunate to have advocates like them and the members of our U.S. House delegation representing our state in Washington, D.C. We will also continue to post regular updates on the Provost’s Office Federal Policy Updates page, including regarding student visas and the support the University is providing to international students and scholars.
Our approach will continue to be to monitor the federal landscape as it affects us, to be in close communication with our peers and colleagues, and to focus our response and efforts using those channels that we believe will be most effective in protecting and furthering our ability to carry out our mission on behalf of our students, patients and the people we serve.